sustainability | ukwatch.net

Kept Afloat on a Tide of Money

JamieSW — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:39:21 +0000

All over the world, protesters are engaged in a heroic battle with reality. They block roads, picket fuel depots, throw missiles and turn over cars in an effort to hold it at bay. The oil is running out and governments, they insist, must do something about it. When they’ve sorted it out, what about the fact that the days are getting shorter? What do we pay our taxes for?

The latest people to join these surreal protests are the world’s fishermen. They are on strike in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Japan and demonstrating in scores of maritime countries. Last month in Brussels they threw rocks and flares at the police, who have been conspiring with the world’s sedimentary basins to keep the price of oil high. The fishermen warn that if something isn’t done to help them, thousands could be forced to scrap their boats and hang up their nets. It’s an appalling prospect, which we should greet with heartfelt indifference.

Just as the oil price now seems to be all that stands between us and runaway climate change, it is also the only factor which offers a glimmer of hope to the world’s marine ecosystems. No East Asian government was prepared to conserve the stocks of tuna; now one-third of the tuna boats in Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea will stay in dock for the next few months because they can’t afford to sail1. The unsustainable quotas set on the US Pacific seaboard won’t be met this year, because the price of oil is rising faster than the price of fish2. The indefinite strike called by Spanish fishermen is the best news European fisheries have had for years. Beam trawlermen – who trash the seafloor and scoop up a massive bycatch of unwanted species – warn that their industry could collapse within a year3. Hurray to that too.

It would, of course, be better for everyone if these unsustainable practices could be shut down gently without the need for a crisis or the loss of jobs, but this seems to be more than human nature can bear. The European Union has a programme for taking fishing boats out of service – the tonnage of the European fleet has fallen by 5% since 19994 – but the decline in boats is too slow to overtake the decline in stocks. Every year the EU, like every other fishery authority, tries to accommodate its surplus boats by setting quotas higher than those proposed by its scientific advisers, and every year the population of several species is pressed a little closer to extinction.

The fishermen make two demands, which are taken up by politicians in coastal regions all over the world: they must be allowed to destroy their own livelihoods, and the rest of us should pay for it. Over seven years, European taxpayers will be giving this industry E3.8bn5. Some of this money is used to take boats out of service and to find other jobs for fishermen, but the rest is used to equip boats with new engines and new gear, to keep them on the water, to modernise ports and landing sites and to promote and market the catch. Except for the funds used to re-train fishermen or help them into early retirement, there is no justification for this spending. At least farmers can argue – often falsely – that they are the “stewards of the countryside”. But what possible argument is there for keeping more fishermen afloat than the fish population can bear?

The EU says its spending will reduce fishing pressure and help fishermen adopt greener methods. In reality, it is delaying the decline of the industry and allowing it to defy ecological limits for as long as possible. If the member states want to protect the ecosystem, it’s a good deal cheaper to legislate than to pay. Our fishing policies, like those of almost all maritime nations, are a perfect parable of commercial stupidity and short-termism, helping an industry to destroy its long-term prospects for the sake of immediate profit.

But the fishermen only demand more. The headline on this week’s Fishing News is “Thanks for Nothing!”, bemoaning the British government’s refusal to follow France, Spain and Italy in handing out fuel subsidies6. But why the heck should it? The Scottish fishing secretary, Richard Lochhead, demands that the government in Westminster “open the purse strings”. He also insists that new money is “not tied to decommissioning”: in other words no more boats should be taken off the water7. Is this really a service to the industry, or only to its most short-sighted members?

I have a leaked copy of the draft proposal that European states will discuss on Thursday8. It’s a disaster. Some of the boats which, under existing agreements, will be scrapped and turned into artificial reefs, permanently reducing the sized of the fleet, can now be replaced with smaller vessels. The EU will pay costs and salaries for crews stranded by the fuel crisis, so that they stay in business and can start fishing again when the price falls. Member states will be able to shell out more money (E100,000 per boat instead of E30,000) without breaking state aid rules. They can hand out new grants for replacing old equipment with more fuel-efficient gear. The proposal seems to be aimed at ensuring that the industry collapses through lack of fish rather than lack of fuel. The fishermen won’t go down without taking the ecosystem with them.

What makes the draft document so dumb is that in some regions, especially in British waters, the industry is just beginning to turn. While French, Spanish and Italian fishermen clamour for a resumption of bluefin tuna fishing9, knowing that if they are allowed to fish now, this will be the last season ever, around the UK it has begun to dawn on some fishermen that there might be an association between the survival of the fish and the survival of the fishing. Prompted by Young’s seafood and some of the supermarkets, who in turn have been harried by environmental groups, some of the biggest British fisheries have applied for eco-labels from the Marine Stewardship Council, which sets standards for how fish are caught10. Fishermen around the UK also seem to be taking the law more seriously, and at last to be showing some interest in obscure issues such as spawning grounds and juvenile fish (which, believe it or not, turn out to have a connection to future fish stocks). By ensuring that far too many boats, and far too many desperate fishermen, stay on the water, and that the remaining quotas are stretched too thinly, the EU will slow down or even reverse the greening of the industry.

Why is this issue so hard to resolve? Why does every representative of a fishing region believe he must defend his constituents’ right to ensure that their children have nothing to inherit? Why do the leaders of the fishermen’s associations feel the need always to denounce the scientists who say that fish stocks decline if they are hit too hard? If this is a microcosm of how human beings engage with the environment, the prospect for humanity is not a happy one.

1. Tom Seaman, July 2008. Global supply of sushi tuna to plummet on soaring fuel prices. Intrafish, Vol 6, Issue 7.
2. Steve Quinn, 29th June 2008. Time to jump ship? Almost, say commercial fishermen. The Associated Press.
3. James Meikle, 23rd May 2008. Fish prices may rise by up to 50%. The Guardian.
4. European Union, 2008. Evolution of the fleet’s number of vessels, tonnage and engine power. http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/fleetstatistics/index.cfm?lng=en
5. European Commission, 2006. The European Fisheries Fund 2007-2013. http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/publications/FEP_EN.pdf
6. Fishing News, 4th July 2008.
7. No author given, 4th July 2008. ‘Open the Purse Strings’ – Lochhead. Fishing News.
8. The Council of the European Union, 2008. Proposal for a Council Regulation instituting a temporary specific action aiming to promote the restructuring of the European fisheries fleets affected by the economic crisis.
9. Agence France Press, 17th June 2008. EU rejects calls to drop planned tuna fishing ban.
10. Severin Carrell, 26th March 2008. British seas turning green, says watchdog. The Guardian.

Bluefin thinking

Ellie Keen — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Tuna, particularly the canned variety, has long been one of the UK’s staple foods and most of us probably have a couple of tin or two somewhere in our cupboards. More recently, we’ve been developing a taste for raw tuna, as sushi bars continue to spread throughout the country.

So, what’s the problem? Tuna is a wild source of protein. We don’t farm tuna; we catch it from the great oceans of the world. And that is where the predicament starts, because global tuna stocks, like those of other species, have been grossly overexploited and are now in big trouble. The iconic bluefin tuna, widely used in sushi, is critically endangered. Bigeye and albacore tuna are also under threat, while yellowfin tuna is in decline globally. Worldwide, up to 90% of stocks of large predatory fish, including tuna, have already been fished out.

The organisations responsible for managing the international tuna fisheries have failed dismally. But where governments have failed, retailers, restaurants and consumers can help turn the tide.

Greenpeace is campaigning to stop the collapse of the world’s remaining tuna fisheries, pushing for the creation of large scale marine reserves and changes in fishing practices to allow tuna and other fish stocks to recover.

This month, the Greenpeace ship Esperenza is confronting tuna boats that are fishing unsustainably in the Pacific. Meanwhile, today, more than 80 Greenpeace activists used nets and chains to close down the stands of five of the biggest and most unscrupulous tuna suppliers at the European Seafood Expo, the world’s largest seafood fair.

The UK is a huge consumer of canned tuna on a global scale. We import well over 100,000 tonnes each year. Sushi sales are also increasing. So, what can we do as consumers?

First of all, look out for restaurants and retailers that show commitment to sustainable seafood when you eat out or shop. For example, it was hearing about the plight of tuna that leading UK sushi chain Moshi Moshi to the decision to stop serving bluefin in their restaurants and to adopt strict sourcing policies. Among retailers, Marks and Spencer has consistently topped Greenpeace’s seafood sustainability surveys. Second, avoid red-listed species like bluefin tuna. (You can find a guide to these species here.)

Third, wherever possible, choose pole- and line-caught tuna, the most environmentally friendly way of catching the fish. Other methods of catching tuna, even when the cans are labelled “dolphin friendly”, can be very destructive – killing rare giant turtles, sharks, juvenile tuna and many other fish species.

Sustainable seafood is part of the answer, but the science is clear that we also need a global network of no-take marine reserves, like national parks at sea, covering large parts of the oceans. Following the science, Greenpeace is calling for 40% of the world’s oceans to be marine reserves, where no fishing is allowed.

By only choosing sustainable seafood in shops and restaurants, we can all make a difference. Alternatively, as professor of marine biology Daniel Pauly, of the University of British Columbia, has said, you don’t need to worry about these problems – as long as your children like plankton stew.

Population growth is a threat. But it pales against the greed of the rich

JamieSW — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:06:26 +0000

I cannot avoid the subject any longer. Almost every day I receive a clutch of emails about it, asking the same question. A frightening new report has just pushed it up the political agenda: for the first time the World Food Programme is struggling to find the supplies it needs for emergency famine relief(1). So why, like most environmentalists, won’t I mention the p-word? According to its most vociferous proponents (Paul and Anne Erlich), population is “our number one environmental problem”(2). But most greens will not discuss it.

Is this sensitivity or is it cowardice? Perhaps a bit of both. Population growth has always been politically charged, and always the fault of someone else. Seldom has the complaint been heard that “people like us are breeding too fast.” For the prosperous clergyman Thomas Malthus, writing in 1798, the problem arose from the fecklessness of the labouring classes(3). Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, eugenicists warned that white people would be outbred. In rich nations in the 1970s the issue was overemphasised, as it is the one environmental problem for which poor nations are largely to blame. But the question still needs to be answered. Is population really our number one environmental problem?

The Optimum Population Trust cites some shocking figures, produced by the UN. They show that if the global population keeps growing at current rates, it will reach 134 trillion by 2300(4). This is plainly ridiculous: no one expects it to happen. In 2005, the UN estimated that the world’s population will more or less stabilise in 2200 at 10 billion(5). But a paper published in Nature last week suggests that that there is an 88% chance that global population growth will end during this century(6).

In other words, if we accept the UN’s projection, the global population will grow by roughly 50% and then stop. This means it will become 50% harder to stop runaway climate change, 50% harder to feed the world, 50% harder to prevent the overuse of resources. But compare this rate of increase to the rate of economic growth. Many economists predict that, occasional recessions notwithstanding, the global economy will grow by about 3% a year this century. Governments will do all they can to prove them right. A steady growth rate of 3% means a doubling of economic activity every 23 years. By 2100, in other words, global consumption will increase by roughly 1600%. As the equations produced by Professor Roderick Smith of Imperial College have shown, this means that in the 21st Century we will have used 16 times as many economic resources as human beings have consumed since we came down from the trees(7).

So economic growth this century could be 32 times as big an environmental issue as population growth. And, if governments, banks and businesses have their way, it never stops. By 2115, the cumulative total rises to 3200%, by 2138 to 6400%. As resources are finite, this is of course impossible, but it is not hard to see that rising economic activity – not human numbers – is the immediate and overwhelming threat.

Those who emphasise the dangers of population growth maintain that times have changed: they are not concerned only with population growth in the poor world, but primarily with growth in the rich world, where people consume much more. The Optimum Population Trust (OPT) maintains that the “global environmental impact of an inhabitant of Bangladesh … will increase by a factor of 16 if he or she emigrates to the USA”(8). This is surely not quite true, as recent immigrants tend to be poorer than the native population, but the general point stands: population growth in the rich world, largely driven by immigration, is more environmentally damaging than population growth in the poor world. In the US and the UK, their ecological impact has become another stick with which immigrants can be beaten.

But growth rates in the US and UK are atypical; even the OPT concedes that by 2050, “the population of the most developed countries is expected to remain almost unchanged, at 1.2 billion”(9). The population of the EU-25 (the first 25 nations to join the Union) is likely to decline by 7 million(10).

This, I accept, is of little consolation to people in the UK, where the government now expects numbers to rise from 61 million to 77 million by 2051(11). Eighty per cent of the growth here, according to the OPT, is the direct or indirect result of immigration (recent arrivals tend to produce more children)(12). Migrationwatch UK claims that immigrants bear much of the responsibility for Britain’s housing crisis. A graph on its website suggests that without them the rate of housebuilding in England between 1997 and 2004 would have exceeded new households by 30-40,000 a year(13).

Is this true? According to the Office of National Statistics, average net immigration to the UK between 1997 and 2004 was 153,000(14). Let us (generously) assume that 90% of these people settled in England, and that their household size corresponded to the average for 2004, of 2.3(15). This would mean that new immigrants formed 60,000 households a year. The Barker Review, commissioned by the Treasury, shows that in 2002 (the nearest available year), 138,000 houses were built in England, while over the 10 years to 2000, average household formation was 196,000(16). This rough calculation suggests that Migrationwatch is exaggerating, but that immigration is still an important contributor to housing pressure. But even total population growth in England is responsible for only about 35% of the demand for homes(17). Most of the rest is the result of the diminishing size of households.

Surely there is one respect in which the growing human population constitutes the primary threat? The amount of food the world eats bears a direct relationship to the number of mouths. After years of glut, the storerooms are suddenly empty and grain prices are rocketing. How will another three billion be fed?

Even here, however, population growth is not the most immediate issue: another sector is expanding much faster. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation expects that global meat production will double by 2050 (growing, in other words, at two and a half times the rate of human numbers)(18). The supply of meat has already tripled since 1980: farm animals now take up 70% of all agricultural land (19) and eat one third of the world’s grain(20). In the rich nations we consume three times as much meat and four times as much milk per capita as the people of the poor world(21). While human population growth is one of the factors that could contribute to a global food deficit, it is not the most urgent.

None of this means that we should forget about it. Even if there were no environmental pressures caused by population growth, we should still support the measures required to tackle it: universal sex education, universal access to contraceptives, better schooling and opportunities for poor women. Stabilising or even reducing the human population would ameliorate almost all environmental impacts. But to suggest, as many of my correspondents do, that population growth is largely responsible for the ecological crisis is to blame the poor for the excesses of the rich.

References:

1. A WFP official, speaking at the World Economic Forum, cited by Gillian Tett and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, 26th January 2008. Food supplies too scarce to meet relief needs. The Financial Times.

2. Paul and Anne Ehrlich, 1990. The Population Explosion. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1990.

3. Thomas Malthus, 1798. Essay on the Principle of Population.

4. Optimum Population Trust, 2007. Too many people: Earth’s population problem
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.earth.html

5. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2005. World Population Prospects. The 2004
Revision. http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/sixbilpart1.pdf.

6. Wolfgang Lutz, Warren Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov, 20th January 2008. The coming acceleration of global population ageing. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature06516

7. Roderick A Smith, 29th May 2007. Lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Carpe Diem: The dangers of risk aversion. See Appendix 1. Reprinted in Civil Engineering Surveyor, October 2007.

8. Optimum Population Trust, 30th May 2006. Mass migration damaging the planet. Press release. http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.release30May06.htm

9. Optimum Population Trust, 2007. Too many people: Earth’s population problem
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.earth.html

10. ibid.

11. BBC Online, 23rd October 2007. Population ‘to hit 65m by 2016′. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7057765.stm

12. Optimum Population Trust, 2007. Migration: UK. http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.more.migration.uk.html

13. Migrationwatch UK, 13th June 2006. Briefing paper 7.7: The impact of immigration on housing demand.
http://migration-watchuk.org/Briefingpapers/housing/7_7_NoLimits.asp

14. ONS, cited by Optimum Population Trust, 2007. Migration: UK. http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.more.migration.uk.html

15. Kate Barker, March 2004. Final report of Delivering stability: securing our future housing needs. Chart 1.3, p16. http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/E/3/barker_review_report_494.pdf

16. Kate Barker, ibid, p16.

17. Population trends for England can be found here: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Expodata/Spreadsheets/D9537.xls. As only some years are given, I took the average growth rate over 1991-2001, divided it by 2.3 and then expressed it as a percentage of total housing demand in 2000.

18. UNFAO, 2006. Livestock’s Long Shadow, pxx. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e.pdf

19. ibid, pxxi.

20. ibid, p12.

21. ibid, Table 1.5, p15.

Red questions for green solutions

JamieSW — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:34:55 +0000

Peter Tatchell argues that green is the new red and that socialists should join the Green Party. I agree that the green issue should galvanise socialists. Capitalism ‘trumped’ socialism by its seeming capacity for unlimited growth, even promising that through the market, everyone would eventually benefit and have their share of ‘people’s capitalism’. The ecological crisis has removed this illusion.

Where resources are limited the question of who benefits and who loses cannot be passed off as a by-product of the ’hidden hand of the market’ or failure of will, risk or effort. Within a resource-limited system, even if those limits are far off, the cruelties and inequities of global capitalism and its rather coyly admitted ‘market failures’ cannot be justified. In a limited system the case for the private ownership and control of resources is much more difficult to sustain.

Democratic control of the economy is at the heart of the socialist project. At its most basic, socialism represents the view that human well-being is the collective responsibility of society as a whole. Green socialism would extend the notion of well being to all other species and the ecosystems of the planet.

A common base

A major difficulty for the green movement is that while it unites around a critique of the abuse of the natural environment it does not have a common political position on which to base an alternative. Ideas have ranged from a return to hunter-gathering through local economies to market solutions.

From a socialist perspective both market and pre-modern solutions would be unacceptable, the former because they still retain a capitalist system, the latter because they are unlikely to be suitable for large-scale populations. Non-capitalist solutions at the local or community level are more possible but suffer from a lack of clarity about how the ‘local’ would be defined.

Geographically it is hard to say what is local (neighbourhood, city/town and hinterland, regional ecosystem, sub-national region, nation, sub-continent, continent?). Socialists are also internationalists (as are many greens) and human populations are now highly mobile, so the social focus of the local may be difficult even if it can be defined in ecological terms.

The economics of the local is also an issue for socialists. How would production be organised? Would there still be private ownership and waged labour? How industrialised would a local economy be? What would be the pattern of land ownership? Would there be a welfare system? Would there be a system of taxation?

How would the market, if any, function? Would a green economy reform market capitalism, exist alongside it, spread through it like a virus or confront it directly? What is to happen to the millions of people now living in the cities? These are practical questions that have been asked many times before but they all seem to point to a wider socio-economic solution than the green small scale.

Some green solutions may appear to challenge the status quo but mimic market solutions. For example, buying plots of land and aiming for self-sufficiency would seem to be a radical solution. However, buying land is an individualised response based on access to money or credit. In a limited system it is also highly unlikely there will be enough land for everyone.

’Natural’ virtue

Socialists would also question whether the fairly widespread green view of ‘community’, the local, the regional, the human-scale as having ‘natural’ virtue is justified. Historically human societies have shown a range of behaviours from benign to violent, open to restrictive, egalitarian to hierarchical, and most show evidence of male domination and a sexual division of labour, if not outright repression of women.

Much green thinking, implicitly or explicitly, proposes a ‘natural’ basis for action. From the deeper green perspectives to some relatively shallow ones there is an assumption that humans have strayed from a natural path of harmony and balance with Nature. In order to return to the true path it is necessary to draw lessons from natural systems, from indigenous peoples, from unpeopled wilderness or from some spiritual insight associated with natural conditions.

From a socialist perspective any naturalistic approach to human actions must be questioned. Why should there be harmony and balance in nature? It is perfectly possible to see humans as existing within constrained physical limits without assuming that there is any natural answer to guide human solutions. To paraphrase Marx, humans must understand the dynamics of their condition in order to be able to change it.

This is not to make the human-centred assumption that humans can ultimately change the conditions of their existence, but it is also not to assume there is a natural answer. Natural conditions are constraining but not determining. Human responses to them must be open to social debate and analysis, to a politics of human existence in nature. Socialists must maintain their materialist analysis that there is no (super) natural power in nature.

Socialism is about analysing the sources of inequality and ecological destruction humanity faces and looking for new ways of living that would enable people to democratically control their means of sustenance in a way that minimises human impact on the natural world and enables each individual to express their own creativity. Certainly a case can be made that socialists should join the Greens, but I do not think it is yet proven that Greens are the new Red.

Carbon Trading?

Ellie Keen — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:54:35 +0000

Imagine a football league where, if a team has a run of bad results, it could simply buy points from another club.

So poor tottering Tottenham, for instance, instead of spending £16m on a misfiring striker, could use the dosh to procure points from Manchester City, saving Sven-Goran Eriksson from the dangers of vertigo in the process.

Conversely, an over-achieving team like Bristol City could sell points to help, say, either or both of the Sheffield clubs avoid an ignominious drop.

Promotion and relegation could be decided not by performance on the pitch but by who will do business with you, and on what terms.

Unfair? Unsportsmanlike? Open to abuse? Welcome to the world of carbon trading, where just such a system operates in the exchange of carbon credits – a scheme which compares unfavourably with bundling up US sub-prime mortgage loans and flogging them on to high street banks.

And has it brought about a reduction in CO2 emissions? You’ll see Accrington Stanley winning the Premier League first.

This is a tad worrying, because we really do need a system that drives down energy use and moves us towards an economy and communities that are genuinely sustainable.

News this week that ministers are considering abandoning the European renewable energy target (20% from renewable sources by 2020) is still more disconcerting.

Apparently it will cost about £4bn a year for us to get to 9%. Has Gordon Brown not heard the phrase ‘invest to save’?

We live in a strangely dysfunctional world where we’re happy to applaud Al Gore to the rafters but do so little in response to what we know about climate change that we’ll struggle to offset the energy consumed in the awareness-raising.

Last week Forum for the Future issued a league table of sustainable cities in the UK.

This is good news (especially if you live in Brighton; less so if your home is in Hull) but unfortunately the forum can’t offer meaningful rewards for improvement.

It wouldn’t take much imagination, though, to tweak the local government finance system to provide real incentives to progress towards sustainability.

Councils that promote and subsidise large-scale domestic micro-generation could win additional freedoms or funds. Planners can set tougher targets for zero-carbon homes.

The opportunities are there: has central or local government the will or the nous to grasp them?

Barns to Beacons

Ellie Keen — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:46:57 +0000

Even if citizens were to produce more food, and cities like London – which alone, in terms of the resources it consumes, has a ‘footprint’ larger than the entire country – were to use a lot less, they’d still need supplies from the countryside, at least for the foreseeable future. How might this ever be done more sustainably?

One can find some clues in Fivepenny Farm, set on a hillside overlooking the ‘Jurassic Coast’ of west Dorset. This has become one of the most ‘desirable’ parts of Britain. On another brilliant spring day like this, bluebells carpeting the woods beside meandering lanes, the sea shimmering in the distance, it’s not hard to see why. Farmhouses regularly sell for two million dollars and more, suitably detached from the muck, stench and bother of farming land that is increasingly subsidized to produce nothing at all.

Joyti Fernandez shows me around Fivepenny Farm, together with two sympathetic officials. They helped to find funding for a new timber-framed barn that has just been raised by a band of volunteers, and is now being thatched. It is a beautiful timber structure. Inside there will be storage areas, a dairy, processing rooms for meat, juice, jams, chutneys and herbal products from more than 20 smallholders in the vicinity. Together they make up the jauntily named Peasant Evolution Producers Co-operative (PEP-SI).

Promising start

Joyti is also involved in publishing The Land magazine¹. Her knowledge of the feudal law of the land in Britain has come in handy. When her family and some friends bought these 16 hectares of agricultural land and moved onto it to live, some three years ago, the local authority promptly tried to evict them. Joyti won on appeal – the whole point, she argued, is that only by living on the land can one bring it back into more productive use. She knows of many people who, given half a chance, would do just the same.

Productive it most certainly is. Already there’s a market garden of about two hectares that last year brought in some $25,000 from sales to local markets, stores, cafés and restaurants. Not, as Joyti points out, ‘pure profit’, but a promising start.

Over parts of this soil, in rotation, chickens scratch, Tamworth pigs and piglets root, improving fertility – and incidentally removing all trace of the dreaded slugs – as they go. In large polytunnels, this year’s plants are being propagated. We sample crisp, sweet, raw peas. There are windbreaks of willow, hedges of hazelnut. Between newly planted old varieties of apple tree there are sheep and lambs, one seeing the light of its very first day.

Then there are the cows – four very pretty beige ones. The fencing of a new field for them has just been completed. ‘Real gates!’ cries Joyti. Most of the other fields don’t have them – and improvised obstacles bring daily aggravation. You have to know this to appreciate the wonders of a proper gate.

Joyti, the two officials and I set about herding the cows to their new field. Joyti calls and they gambol towards her, like the cows of dreams. But they have to cross a small stream, and Daisy – I think it is – won’t go. The two officials are left behind, vainly trying to persuade her. Daisy doesn’t like being parted from her daughter, who’s gone on ahead, but she likes the stream even less. There is much plaintive mooing. She has to be coaxed to take the long way round. Joyti tethers her to a post, where Daisy pointedly relieves herself and we say our farewells.

Nearest thing to wilderness

The gentle slopes of Dorset are one thing. The snow-covered Brecon Beacons in south Wales on a bright, windswept March morning are quite another – the nearest thing to wilderness there is in Britain. Surely, nothing much can grow here.

Perhaps not. Military training vehicles clutter the roads; low-flying fighter aircraft tear the air. Beside the main road is a little encampment flying banners that say: ‘Social Change Not Climate Change’ and ‘People Not Pipelines’. Into the blood-red sandstone of this National Park there now runs a gaping wound akin to that made by a motorway – a pipeline that will carry imported gas under extreme pressure inland from the port of Milford Haven.

The little lane has to cross this on its way to Kathleen’s plot. She’s the mother of Dan, a colleague of mine, and she’s responded generously to my curiosity about permaculture. On a south-facing slope beside a truly babbling brook she has a hectare of land, sliced off the end of a farmer’s field and, on this day, skirted with snow. She’s lived here for eight years.

At first there was a tumbledown house that tumbled down after six years. So she lived through an entire year in a hut with just a stove, a compost toilet, a bed and a tiny kitchen – and loved it. Now she basks in a small, light-filled wooden house she designed herself, much of the indoor furniture built from the remnants of the old one. Insulated with wool, roofed with recycled tyres shaped as slates, it is heated to perfection by a single wood-burning stove. A supply of pure water comes straight from the stream. She has mains electricity – Kathleen feels a wind turbine would be too large and expensive.

The house is set amid a small wood and what, at first glance, looks like a decorative garden, the Beacons a distant backdrop. In fact, it’s the source of a lot of her food. The more you look, the more you see the careful thought that went into it. She’s planted more than 150 food-producing trees, constructed ponds, ditches and raised beds, often using materials found in waste skips. She has planted the beginnings of a forest garden and an edible windbreak hedge.

Missing moles

On the farmer’s side of the boundary fence is the familiar, bare, green field. On Kathleen’s side is a long ditch to catch the chemical run-off from it. Her land must be immensely more healthy, and becoming more rather than less so with time.

She asks me if I notice anything else. ‘Moles?’ she hints. There are no molehills in the farmer’s field. This means there are no worms in the soil, which means it is sterile – killed by chemicals, yet also entirely dependent upon them for its fertility. On her plot the soil from plentiful molehills has filled her raised beds.

Self-reliance rather than self-sufficiency is what she’s after – she has not, by any means, withdrawn from the world. The local permaculture network has provided a practical and social link with like-minded people all around her.

She says: ‘This way of life is my offering. It is not predatory. It is respectful, rewarding, joyful. It can be a pattern for others.

‘I live on little more than $10,000 a year, and yet I have in abundance what a human being truly needs; a warm shelter, real food, clean water, family, friends, silence and wildlife. I have found my tribe.’

1. www.thelandisours.org